My New Favorite Commercial

LL Cool J is hard as hell.  But apparently he didn’t start off that way.  Rumor has it when he’s alone in his room sometimes he stares at the wall and in the back of his mind he hears his conscience call.

The Perfect Run and Another New Balance Ad

Hungry Mother on “that” run:

I thought about my “magic run” back in 1977, when I was on sabbatical leave at Duke. On day, when I was doing a power walk, I jogged for 3 miles for the first time in my life. That run was smooth and effortless. I felt as though I could run forever.

I think everyone who’s ever run (or biked/paddled/whatever) somewhat seriously has had that day. If you’re really lucky you’ll get several of them in your life. To be fair, anyone who’s ever seen me run knows that I’ve never had an “effortless” training session in my life, but I have had a couple of days when it seemed like everything just clicked perfectly. In my case, they usually end with a violent vomiting session because as good as I feel, I’m really overheated or pushed beyond where I can run comfortably. Is that the runner’s high I’ve heard so much about?

As with most of my other successes in life, good runs for me are usually fueled by spite more than anything else. I ran my best 5k on what was supposed to be a recovery day after a 10 mile run that I completely bonked on and barely finished. Luckily, I was highly pissed off at the beginning of the race and was further agitated by a jobroni (he’d later become my running nemesis) who kept passing me then slowing down and letting me pass him back. With about a half mile remaining I decided that this jerk was not going to pass me again, and I ended up edging him out by about 15 seconds to take the title in the fat boy division of that race.

I’ve had a couple of training runs over 13 miles that seemed to go perfectly too. One of these runs started with all the people I was training with taking off at too fast of a pace for me–I’m very slow at the start, but usually accelerate as the run goes on and end up just kind of slow. Running alone gave me a few miles to stew, and I eventually began to boil. I think I ended up passing them somewhere around ten miles, and the site of them just fueled the fire–each mile after that got faster and faster. I actually ran a personal best for the half marathon distance that afternoon, although it doesn’t count since it wasn’t a sanctioned race. Unfortunately, it was also about 92 degrees outside. After I puked I almost passed out and had to go sit inside a nearby restaurant in the AC and sip water for about an hour.

I really showed them, huh?  Here’s some running zen to help you remember why you do it.

Jitterbug Cell Phone For Older People…Seriously?

I get the fact that there is a big demographic of seniors that may not be reached by the majority of mobile phone services. But I don’t think this commercial sends that message. To me, this is borderline insulting to older people. Watch it first, and let me know what impression it makes on you.

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OK, to me this commercial says:

We understand the needs of older people, and we’re doing something about it. Our phone has big numbers, since you’ve probably never used any touch tone phone and can’t count to ten. We don’t expect you to have that complicated keypad layout memorized.

And sure, you can control the volume on any other phone, but that’s complicated. This phone has one setting–LOUD. That will make it seem more natural when you yell back into it.

Besides that, old people are too stupid to figure out something as complicated as a cell phone. You’ll need us to help you save names and numbers into the phone, because there’s no way you’d ever think of something as clever as writing them down instead.

Not my words, mind you, just what this commercial says to me. Was this made by SNL? It reminds me of the “DVDs My Wife Made” digital short from a couple of weeks ago.

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So It’s Not Just Me

Back before anyone read this blog *wink, cough*, I wrote a fairly snarky post about the absolutely ridiculous commercials for Yaz and Viva Viagra.  It seems I’m finally vindicated, as NewsComa is equally creeped out by the Viagra commercial.

Every now and then I make a mistake that seems fairly common among bloggers.  I come up with an idea that is so damn funny that I absolutely must get it published as soon as possible.  After all, the whole world is probably dying to know how unbelievably witty and clever I am, right?  I then spend the next couple of days checking every now and then to see how many hundreds of links and comments I’ve received.

So far I’m batting .000

I suspected my Yaz/Viagra post may fall into that category, so I went back an re-read it.  My conclusion:

I really am as clever and funny as I thought–maybe even funnier!

Turning Into a Housewife

So I’m sitting here surfing/writing/reading/napping and there are all of these crazy shows about having babies on TLC that document parents’ first few days at home with their babies.

Either our kid is really easy, we are really laid back and easy going, or both. These people stress over the slightest little things, get rattled by everything else, and are constantly whining about their precious sleep. Haha! You crybabies don’t deserve to sleep from what I can tell!

Anyway, while I’m having fun not being at work, I don’t see how some people (I assume mostly women based on the commercials) could stand to sit and watch stuff like that day in and day out. Luckily I have plenty of other things to keep me busy.